aid
that you'd let me help you!"

This reproach appealed to Hamilton as grossly unfair.

"Why, Cicily," he exclaimed, "I did let you help. I've let you do
everything that you wanted to do--no matter how--" In a sudden access
of discretion, he choked back the "foolish."

Delancy, presuming on the right of criticism that had been his during
the years of guardianship, spoke with a candor that was not flattering.

"He let you do more than I'd have let you do. He let you waste your
money on bath-tubs and libraries, and such foolishness, to make the men
dissatisfied. I wish somebody would tell me what a man working for two
dollars a day can do with a bath-tub and a library at the works."

"If anybody were to tell you, you wouldn't listen," was Cicily's pert
retort.

Delancy tugged at his wisp of whisker, and wagged his head dolefully.

"I don't know what young women these days are coming to," was his
melancholy comment.

"What you men are driving us to, you mean!" Cicily fairly snapped. It
was difficult enough to manage her husband, without having her position
jeopardized by the interference of this meddlesome old man, who stood
for that exclusion of her sex against which she was fighting. She went
to the chair in which Ferguson had been sitting, and reclined there in
a posture of graceful ease that was far from expressing the turmoil of
her spirit. As he watched her movements, and studied the loveliness of
her, with her delicate face aglow and her amber eyes brilliant in this
mood of excitement, Hamilton forgot his worriment for the moment in
uxorious admiration. He was smiling fondly on his wife, even as Delancy
uttered an exclamation of rebuke to him:

"And you're her husband!" His emphasis made it clear that a husband like
himself would have suppressed such insubordination long ago.

"Well," Hamilton replied placidly, and with a hint of amusement in his
voice, "you brought her up, you know."

"I did not--no such thing!" the old man spluttered. In his indignation,
he pulled so viciously on a whisker that he winced from the pain, which
by no means tended to soothe his ruffled temper.

"You're quite right, Uncle Jim," Cicily agreed, with dangerous sweetness
in the musical voice. "Of course, you never had any time to pay
attention to me, or to Aunt Emma either, for that matter. Oh, no, you
were too much absorbed in that horrid business of yours. You drove Aunt
Emma into working for the heathen, and incidentally,